Minogue poured more Marie Brizard. He could think of nothing to say. Kathleen was helloing a neighbour across the wall. Then she stood by the garden chair where Minogue was dishing out the anisette. Pat, formerly quiescent with the food and drink, led with a high card.
"You're County Clare, aren't you, Mr Minogue?"
"Absolutely," Minogue affirmed. He raised his glass. Iseult sniggered. Pat raised his glass the length of his arm. Had Iseult primed Pat?
"A hundred and one percent," Minogue added with feeling.
"I heard recently what a Clareman's idea of heaven was, you know," he continued.
"Tell us so," said Minogue.
"Cork beat, the hay saved and a girl in Lisdoonvarna."
Even Daithi laughed. Kathleen and Iseult poked each other, laughing both.
"You should be on the stage," Kathleen said to Pat. She was standing behind Iseult now, absent-mindedly patting the dark hair that fell on Iseult's shoulders. Iseult didn't notice. In Minogue's uncodified religion, Kathleen's gestures had the force of a transfiguration. For several seconds the garden and the orange wash of the sun, the smiles, the smell of clay, the birdsong fell away from him. It will be very hard on Kathleen if this Pat fella does win her, Minogue thought.
"The next stage leaves town at eight," Iseult said.
Minogue was thinking that the unconscious was too strong a force in life entirely when he heard Daithi calling from the kitchen window. He walked down the lawn and entered the kitchen. Daithi was doing the dishes and that gave Minogue pause to wonder. Perhaps the boy was washing his hands in advance of some divilment later on tonight. Neurotic. A girl?
"Phone, Da. It's from work," Daithi murmured.
It was Hoey.
"Sorry to disturb you at home, sir. Stepaside station phoned. Driscoll. They have a fella that maybe we'd be wanting to talk to. A fella that was snooping around Mr Combs' place, like."
"Yes, go on."
Minogue believed his anisette breath would surely stick to the phone like spray paint.
"It was by chance that someone saw him going up the lane. He went into a field and then came back up to the house and started looking in the windows. He tried to get in the door, too."
"Did he try to make off with anything? Use any force trying to get into the house?"
"No, sir."
"Who is he?"
"He's a tinker, sir. He calls himself Michael Joseph Joyce. He's living in a caravan down the back of Loughlinstown somewhere. He has a lot of drink on him and he's not inclined to be very direct with answers."
"Did he resist being brought to the station or that class of thing?"
"No, sir. He was spotted fiddling with a horse in a field belonging to Combs."
"Right, of course. That's it," Minogue said.
"That's what?"
"The horse. I knew there was something I was trying to remember. When I saw the horse, I was wondering who'd be feeding it now that Combs was gone. The horse was tethered up to the gate."
"That's what Joyce said he was about. The arresting Guard wasn't impressed with that one, I'm afraid."
"Hold on there a minute. You said 'arrest.'"
"The Guards here told him that he was under arrest for trespassing. Just to keep him in and question him, sir. They'll keep him overnight so we can see him in the morning. No harm will come of him staying over. You can go straight to Stepaside in the morning, sir. When Joyce is sober, you see."
Minogue noticed the tentative tone in Hoey's voice now.
"Look it, Shea. We can't be locking people up overnight, especially a traveller. It's a fright to God to travelling people to be confined. I don't want us to be giving testimony at an inquest as to why some poor divil woke up in the middle of the night and hung himself. To quote Jimmy Kilmartin, we're not a banana republic. Yet, anyway."
"I know what you're saying," Hoey answered slowly. '‹ "Here. I'll call Stepaside and I'll tell them myself."
"Ah no. It's all right, I'll phone them back myself," Hoey said.
Minogue delayed by the telephone, distracted by the sweet burn of the anisette at the back of his throat. A traveller, tinker. Combs and drinking. A homosexual? Couldn't ignore it. But so squalid an end? Daithi opened the kitchen door.
"I'll be in early," he said.
Daithi seemed relieved. Perhaps it was because he didn't have to face Kathleen who would have pressed questions on him.
"Oh," Minogue shook himself out of his thoughts. Daithi turned quickly as though expecting a rebuke.
"Did I leave a tenner for you under the toothbrushes? Go up and take a look, would you? Maybe I left it under the clock in the kitchen, though. That's old age for you, the first signs. Try upstairs like a good man, would you?"
Daithi's face lifted. He sprang at the first few steps. Too proud to ask for a few bob. As stubborn as an ass. Must have got that from his mother's side. Minogue found a ten-pound note in his pocket and left it under the clock. He stepped down into the garden then, finding that the planet's tilt had raised the sunlight to the tree-tops. The edges of the sky were already primrose. A breeze stirred the poplars next door. Their leaves' soft clacking sounded like the sea. He heard Iseult laugh. He'd have to tell Kathleen about the extra pocket money, he knew, and why he had given it to Daithi if he thought there was a chance he'd be buying pints with it. We're only human, he'd tell her. Would she believe him?
He went outside again. He listened for a while to Pat explaining conditioning in the higher animals. Primates. Weren't cardinals called primates? Even Iseult kept a respectful silence. Then he walked arm-in-arm with Kathleen through the darkening garden. She stopped by the kitchen door. He yanked on her arm.
"If they wanted to smooch and carry on, they can do it anytime," he said. "It's not like we never did it."
"You were all right in that department," Kathleen murmured, not willing yet to release the smile. Minogue, a pagan, kissed his Christian wife.
"And I didn't have to get you all excited talking about monkeys and electrodes, did I?" he said, grasping her tighter.
CHAPTER 7
By eight o'clock, Kenyon had settled on an officer from the Sci and Support Services branch. The man's name was Moore, an Irish name. He phoned Moore's acting section head, cited his authorisation and asked him to hunt down his quarry. The night-duty man was back in ten minutes. Moore had been in his flat. He'd be in Century House within a half hour.
Bowers had given him seven names. Moore was the only one who had articled at law. At first Kenyon could not understand why a barrister would drop a practice and join MI5 unless he had been groomed as an undergraduate.
He noted that Edward Martin Moore had been recruited by the Service six years ago and had climbed four grades since entering. Although he was given field training during his probation period, Moore had been posted to Sci and Support section. He had used his legal training only occasionally since joining. Moore came from landed money, a farm in the home counties. Evidently he didn't need a barrister's income. He may not have wanted to do law in the first place. His forte at the moment was protective security measures in British university laboratories where Defence work had been farmed out.
Moore was unmarried. Both his parents were alive. Moore had toured Australia and the Far East before joining the Service. No Army or Territorial service. Probably not a boy scout either, Kenyon mused. An able administrator, lots of liaison with intelligence services in Europe, some with the Yanks. No tricky stuff with arms or poisoned pens. Moore spoke French and "had a conversational facility" in German.
An administrator? So what? All Kenyon wanted was an astute, observant man to get close to the investigation in Ireland while he settled Combs' affairs. Then, if and when the police found a written record of Combs' rambling, Moore could be on the spot. With good timing, he could well get his hands on it before the police did. If the police found anything first, Moore could push hard with a legal approach and lay claim to papers as effects of the estate. If the Irish police balked at that, what then?